Sustainability Policy

Policy brief & purpose

Calls9's Sustainability policy refers to our responsibility toward our people and our environment. As a company we do not exist in a vacuum, we are part of a bigger ecosystem of people, values, other organisations and nature.This policy applies to our company and its subsidiaries. It may also refer to suppliers and partners. We want to be a responsible business that meets the highest standards of ethics and professionalism and that extends to our suppliers, partners and supply chain.

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‍Protecting the environment

Our company recognises the need to protect the natural environment. Keeping our environment clean and unpolluted is a benefit to all. We are constantly reviewing ways in which we can further develop our initiatives.

Travel and meetings

• Reduce the need for our staff to travel by supporting alternative working arrangements, including home working etc, and promote the use of public transport by the location our office to travel amenities.
• We encourage our team to walk, cycle and/or use public transport to attend meetings, site visits etc, apart from in exceptional circumstances where the alternatives are impractical and/or cost prohibitive.
• Avoid physically travelling to meetings etc where alternatives are available and practical, such as video conferencing and efficient timing of meetings to avoid multiple trips.

Purchase of equipment and consumption of resources

• We minimise our use of paper and other office consumables, we encourage a paperless office environment, where needed we ensure printer settings default to double-siding all paper used, and identifying opportunities to reduce waste.
• As far as possible arrange for the reuse or recycling of office waste, including paper, computer supplies and redundant equipment.
• Reduce the energy consumption of office equipment by purchasing energy efficient equipment and good housekeeping.
• Seek to purchase electricity from a supplier committed to renewable energy. Seek to maximise the proportion from renewable energy sources, whilst also supporting investment in new renewable energy schemes.
• Using environmentally-friendly technologies.

Protecting people

Our company is a committed equal opportunity employer and will abide by all fair labour practices. We believe in inclusion and diversity, and follow this from recruitment- through to daily practices in our office and environment.

This includes combating modern slavery and human trafficking by ensuring:

• We conduct regular pay reviews, 1-2-1 check-ins and annual development reviews
• We provide unlimited access to a confidential EAP scheme for advice and counselling
• We have a policy against modern slavery and human trafficking
• We ensure those we work with have similar policies in place

Proactiveness

Each year we look at our chosen charities and consider the most pressing needs that our team would like to focus on.

Past initiatives have included:

Hovingham Primary School food bank

During COVID-19 we helped Hovingham Primary School provide food and support to disadvantaged families in their community, using our technology, network and media.

Tree planting and promoting physical activity

We encouraged our team to take daily walks and count their steps. This not only allowed them to enjoy the outdoors and take care of their mental health but also plant trees! For every 25,000 steps walked we planted trees through National Trust and the Woodland Trust.

Giving back through technology

We were engaged by The University of Law on a pro bono basis to explore how AI could help welfare claimants gain faster access to the services they badly need. Working in partnership we developed a proof of concept Generative AI solution that enabled non-English speaking claimants to instruct an AI assistant in their own language, receive tailored advice based on their situation and have the AI assistant carry out actions on their behalf. Whilst only a proof of concept at this stage we remain hopeful this technology could be applied to help many thousands of people across the UK in the years to come.

Learning

Our company is committed to enabling our team to continuously learn and develop. The skills we have today may not be the skills we need tomorrow. We must be continuously learning, growing and deepening our understanding of the domains we operate in to stay at the top of our game.

We actively invest in R&D, giving 12 learning days a year to each member of the team, along with a training budget. We are open to suggestions and listen carefully to ideas as we strive to improve the way we operate.

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Impacting people's lives

We are a digital innovation and transformation agency. This means we help organisations around the world understand what's possible with digital, whilst also designing and building the digital platforms that improve their customer experience and empower their teams to do their best work.

By doing this we not only help the people within those organisations but all the people they serve around the world. This means the products and services we create have the potential to impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

This is the power of digital and it’s what makes our work so worthwhile.